| By Keith - Mar 12th, 2007 at 1:04 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
60 Minutes, a show that once defined what was news in America and was critically probed in the film The Insider, made my mouth drop last night.
From Andy Rooney's Bring Back the Draft?:
Recruiters are granting thousands of what they call "moral waivers". A "moral waiver" it turns out means they'll take someone who has committed a crime or even someone who has been in prison. Last year, a total of 8,129 "moral waivers" were given to men who volunteered for the Army.
Are these the people we want representing us? As American soldiers, they're going to give the people they meet around the world the impression that they are what all Americans are like and if they have been taken from the bottom of the barrel, they are not what we're all like.
...
In 1942 we were at war with Germany and it wasn't long before drafted college students and high school graduates dominated our military. It changed the United States Army for the better and in two years made it the best fighting force there has ever been. The Army and Navy were no longer made up of losers.
Now comes the part of this I never thought I'd hear myself say: Whenever we, as a nation, decide to fight a war – in Iraq or anywhere else – it should be fought by average Americans who are drafted.
!
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also, i disagree with Keith about reinstating a draft, but it certainly would endow the nation with a shared moral responsibility for every war we go to. Unfortunately we'd all have to share the sacrifice too, and that goes totally against the new Rumsfeldian way to go to war.
no draft = less troops = less kids rich people know going to war = easier to call for totally illogical imperialistic adventures in the desert.
think about how quickly we'd be out of iraq if the draft was immediately reinstated. it really makes you reexamine how much of a community a country really is. some people are so comfortable calling for war....as long as it's somebody else's kids fighting it
Just one note of clarification: I highlighted Rooney's piece not to endorse the draft, but spark discussion.
There are so many other issues that relate to Rooney's discussion: 1) like Michael, how can our nation afford to turn away gay volunteers, 2) how do we meet the needs of a growing military short of the draft?, 3) what the civil obligations do we have as members of a democratic republic? and 4) Why is it that things have been allowed to get so bad in terms of America's military readiness, treatment of the troops, and our tactical situation in Iraq?
And behind all of this is the looming question: What is America's place in the world?
Tony Smith says Democrats don't have an alternative to the foreign policy of the Bush administration. Link Is this true?
Setting aside the issues of which wars you want to fight and which you don't, a draft makes winning any war harder -- whether it's a moral one or an immoral one.
As far as 'who sacrifices', as it stands today, the average soldier in this country is better educated than the average civilian.
In any sort of draft situation, the poor would be disproportionately affected; they'd disproportionately lack the education that would qualify them to be officers.
I would argue that the last time we had a draft for a moral war, we won because of our overwhelming commitment to the fight and the mass of manpower at our disposal.
Of course you know I don't support the return of the draft, but we must find something other than launching an unwinnable war every forty years to keep some hubris around the Pentagon and White House, because for the life of me I can't imagine how we could have screwed up the current war worse if draftees were on the front lines instead of volunteer soldiers. Plus, if the war planners were thinking about how to compensate for draftees being in-theatre, they might have actually had a better plan then "drop our guys in the middle and hope for the best."